Resources
Resources
Official papers, films, Wikipedia and its citations, programmes, claims and open questions.
15 hits
Boeing / USAF QF-16 unmanned full-scale demonstration, 2013
Pilotless fighter-class jet · not a 777 and not 9M-MRO
Confirmed capability. A QF-16 flew unmanned, including supersonic flight and landing, as a full-scale aerial target. That kills the slogan ‘nothing that size could be flown remotely in 2014.’ It does not place a remote architecture on a commercial 777.
HASC Report 113-102 — Gorgon Stare to recapitalise Blue Devil
House Armed Services Committee · 7 June 2013 · USD(I)/USAF report due 14 Feb 2014
Primary Congressional source: Gorgon Stare is the USAF’s only operational persistent day/night WAMI capability and the logical programme to recapitalise Blue Devil technologies, capabilities and lessons learned. Directed evolution into WAMI + near-vertical direction-finding SIGINT, leveraging Blue Devil PED. Report due 14 February 2014 — 22 days before MH370.
Angel Fire
Wide-area airborne surveillance · lineage into Blue Devil Block 1
USAF/SOCOM WAAS system. Congressional documentation describes Blue Devil Block 1 as integrating Angel Fire-derived wide-area imagery with signals intelligence on manned aircraft. Confirmed as the WAAS ancestor in this family, not as an MH370 collector.
Blue Devil I operational demonstration ends
31 December 2013 · four King Airs returning to Leidos
Attributed via Inside the Air Force, 22 Jan 2014, quoting USAF officials. The four leased King Airs were returning to Leidos, so the original Afghanistan fleet was not an operational candidate on 8 March 2014. The multi-INT sensor package remained US Government property and was being assessed for reassignment (MC-12 and MQ-9 mentioned, not selected). The sensors did not disappear with the lease.
Cubic US6641087B1 — anti-hijack remote pilot
Commercial retrofit · satellite relay · cockpit exclusion
Confirmed patent. Activation onboard or by remote override; deactivate normal pilot control; uplink airspeed/altitude/fuel; optional disable of ordinary communications; CVR/FDR upload. USPTO: 4-year fee 4 May 2007, 8-year fee 4 May 2011, expired 4 Nov 2015 for later non-payment. In force on 8 March 2014. No installation evidence in this archive.
Forensic evidence board — facts, capabilities, missing dossiers
Working chart of intersections · ten target records still outstanding
Cork-board reconstruction: Malaysian military radar and MH370 data on one side; QF-16 2013, UAV/UAS patents, JORN, Kadena P-8A/P-3C, Inmarsat SATCOM and Boeing range models on the other. The bottom row is the live request list — Boeing’s 4 March statement of work, sortie logs, Global Hawk, Pinckney/Kidd tracks, JORN tasking, SBIRS, Five Eyes correspondence, 9M-MRO avionics configuration.
FY2013 NDAA Sec. 927 — integrated SIGINT / WAMI plan
Congressional Record 12 Dec 2012 · ISR Task Force plan due 1 Jan 2013
Statute required a plan for operationally integrated SIGINT able to detect, track and precisely geolocate high-band devices and immediately cue imagery. Named Army Guardrail / ARGUS A160, USAF Blue Moon QRC and DARPA WAND. Consult NSA and USSOCOM.
Gorgon Stare
BIG SAFARI wide-area surveillance · podded, not MQ-9-only
Developed through BIG SAFARI. Increment 2 is ARGUS-derived EO plus Exelis IR. Congress treated the podded/open architecture as integrable on more than one aircraft type. MQ-9 is the documented host; an Orion fit by 8 March 2014 is open. 2013 OSD figure: 2 fps, not 6.
MAGIC
Medium Altitude Global ISR and Communications
USAF endurance-ISR programme. Air vehicle: Aurora Orion. Office: 645 AESG / BIG SAFARI — the same rapid-acquisition group that ran Gorgon Stare and took Blue Devil residuals. Confirmed as a multi-day ISR platform in that family. A specific MH370 operation is not established and is not ruled out.
OSD PB2012 — MAGIC JCTD primary record
PE 0603648D8Z · pp. 32–33 · USCENTCOM sponsor
Primary OSD budget exhibit: MAGIC is a USCENTCOM-sponsored JCTD. 120-hour sortie, nominal 1,000 lb / maximum 2,600 lb at 15,000 ft. Modular payload classes: EO/IR, SIGINT, GMTI, wide-area surveillance, communications relay, strike. Transition named to USAF 303rd AESW.
Thinking About the U.S. Military’s Next-Generation UAS Force
OSD Office of Net Assessment · September 2013 · 112 pp. · HQ0034-09-D-3007-0013
Pre-MH370 OSD-commissioned report. Gorgon Stare / ARGUS-IS / ARGUS-IR: multi-lens arrays, lower frame rate and resolution than HD FMV, areas up to ~40 km². Comparison figure labels conventional FMV 30 fps and Gorgon Stare 2 fps.
Two waves of MH370-themed cyberattacks
9 March official-network intrusion · March–April public malware lures
Working chart of two separate campaigns. Attack one: 9 March spear-phish of officials at the Department of Civil Aviation, National Security Council and Malaysia Airlines — CyberSecurity Malaysia’s public account, disclosed in August. Attack two: MyCERT alerts on 24 March and 18 April about MH370-themed backdoors and a fake investigation-transcript phish aimed more widely. Destination IP in China is not the same as a finding that Beijing ran the operation.
Indonesia: Lhokseumawe and Sabang did not paint MH370
14–19 March 2014 statements
Indonesian Air Force/Defence: no detection of MH370 crossing Indonesian airspace. Lhokseumawe cited ~240 nm capability. Formal denial of concealment.
MyCERT: MH370-themed backdoor and fake-transcript spear-phish
MA-381 · 24 March 2014 · MA-386 · 18 April 2014
Confirmed public advisories, a different campaign from the 9 March official-network intrusion. 24 March: a Facebook-app lure dropping a backdoor with remote-control (C2) capability. 18 April: emails posing as an investigation team / ICAO portal item, password-protected archive, fake MH370 transcript, command-and-control. Aimed at organisations and the public, not shown to be the DCA/NSC/MAS breach.
USAF PB2020 — MAGIC/Orion continued after 2014
PE 0305205F · Congressional adds FY2015–FY2018
MAGIC/Orion did not fade from the budget after 2014. Adds: $20m FY2015, $5m FY2016, $50m FY2017, $40m FY2018, on top of $19m FY2012 and $50m FY2013. Post-2016 money was for airworthiness, cybersecurity, interoperability and mission capability toward a deployable Block 1 Orion.
273 records in the file.